Culture is not consciously developed? Q for Wilkins




Robert L. Carneiro's take on the evolution of culture
Submitted by Kambiz Kamrani on September 16, 2006 - 11:47am.

Some of you guys maybe interested in John Wilkins', of Evolving
Thoughts, review of Robert L. Carneiro's book "Evolutionism in Cultural
Anthropology: A Critical History." I have not read to book, but what I
can gather from Wilkins' post, it is a book that follows a distored and
uninformed take on the evolution of culture. His main point is outlined
in this quote,


"There is this assumption, not evidence, that at the cultural level, at
which he insists one has to approach the evolution of culture, that
culture is consciously developed."

Wilkins goes on explaining concepts in evolutionary theory, such as
mutations are not random and correlating them with invention,

"The same is true of invention. By far the bulk of inventions die
stillborn. The ones that get transmitted to future generations are
those that happen to actually serve a need or a want in the general
culture. Timing is everything too - the number of inventions that were
reinvented later, and became successful when they were, is legion.
When, and only when, they are correlated, do they spread through the
society, and that depends on many things well outside the control of
the inventor."
There is some confusion, in this review, on the mechanism by which
culture evolves. Wilkins identifies the individual as the carrier, but
also the limitations on using that model. He identifies that the
cultural artifact, or meme, has to permeate the culture before it
becomes functional, and how it is hard to track that proccess since the
"entities of the [cultural] evolutionary process" are so limited.


.

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